


Box 953 is COLD, Dear Listeners

by loonyloopyluna



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: so I have some ideas about box 953
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-06-02 05:26:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6552823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loonyloopyluna/pseuds/loonyloopyluna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I'm just saying, it's super cold, and Eiffel heard what sounded like a heartbeat. 2+2 and all that.</p><p>come bother me at chatchevalier.tumblr.com!</p></blockquote>





	Box 953 is COLD, Dear Listeners

The storeroom on the Hephaestus had always been there. Well, until it wasn’t. But before it spiraled into the star and died a terrible fiery death--that’s the important part.

Dr. Selberg took inventory every fifty days, like clockwork. Lambert tagged along sometimes. He said it was a good practice, very by-the-book. Organized, even calming.  And Selberg let him think that.

Really, the whole things was an excuse to check up on two very important items. Boxes 892 and 953.

With all the other random items in the manifest, Lambert never batted an eye when he came across their descriptions. Box 892: incubator. Box 953: cryo chamber.

The incubator was full. The cryo chamber was empty.

The Decima project would be commencing soon. Selberg  _ had _ been hoping for four subjects, but then they lost Officer Fisher. Three it was, then. Lambert, Fourier, and Hui.

Lambert would be first. He’d notice the absence of one of the vials from the incubator, eventually. Selberg took that side of the storeroom the single time they did inventory together after he’d been given the retrovirus. He didn’t even last a hundred days. Still, data was data.

Hui got it next. Selberg was interested to know how Decima would react with his asthma, which hadn’t been giving him a problem in space, since Rhea was there to regulate the oxygen around him.

The result was a  _ lot _ of coughing. It started two months into the experiment and let up only a few hours before he died.

Fourier was last. Well, Selberg hoped she’d be the last. He had a fourth sample in the incubator, just in case something went wrong, and there was always Captain Lovelace as a final subject, but…

Well, she was losing it. As much as she tried to hide it from her remaining crew, Selberg knew it was only a matter of time before she snapped. By that point, they’d been constructing a smaller ship to escape. Selberg helped as little as he could without being obvious.  _ He _ had a guaranteed way back to Earth. But they didn’t need to know that.

Then, despite his best efforts, the ship was finished. It was a rickety, crude thing, to be sure, but it seemed to be seaworthy. They made plans to leave, and soon.

But Fourier hadn’t even begun displaying symptoms, not really. A few sniffles, maybe. Selberg needed more time.

This whole fiasco was ending soon, one way or another. And Selberg knew he’d be back. It was just a matter of getting rid of Captain Lovelace.

So one day, he lured Fourier to the storeroom, under the pretense of looking for spare parts for the generator. He snagged the last sample of Decima on the way out. Box 892, the incubator, was empty. Box 953, the cryo chamber, was not.

Fourier was always meticulous about keeping notes. Her audio logs would be back at Command, since they were still sending them out in a futile hope that  _ someone _ was listening, that  _ someone _ cared. He stashed her journals in a nearby box, under a pile of old farmer’s almanacs.

A few days later, Rhea shut down. Lovelace and Selberg decided it was time to leave. He contacted Command with the news, and they agreed to send a ship to pick him up. They had a few last-minute things to finish up, of course, and then…

As he was leaving his lab, Selberg felt a white-hot pain in the back of his skull, just for a second. It barely felt like he blinked, and then he was on the ground, the sharp pain reduced to a dull, heavy throbbing. Lovelace, and the ship, were gone.

It was a strenuous few weeks, regulating the ship by himself. Systems failed left and right, every hour. He didn’t have the time to unfreeze Fourier and resume study, even if he wanted to.

Kepler docked with a crew of just one other, a newer-model AI unit. Selberg updated him on the situation; he warned him about Lovelace’s threats. Kepler just laughed. Claimed that a hunk of junk like that wouldn’t even be able to make it out of the star’s orbit. No matter how well Lovelace and Fourier thought they did, they were two people who built a spaceship out of spare parts from a ship that was long past its best-by date. No. Rationally, Lovelace had to be dead. No question about it.

On the way back to Earth, Kepler explained the plan. A crew would be by to fix up the Hephaestus, make it shiny and new for another mission. Selberg would be along on that one, under a different name, but the same orders.

Selberg requested that Box 953 stay untouched. Said it contained vital information pertaining to the Decima project. And he left it at that.

At Canaveral, he had time to tinker with the virus. He learned how to make in inert, and how to activate it. He decided he wouldn’t wake Fourier until after he’d completed his trials with his new crew members; it would be far too much of a hassle to explain her sudden appearance, not to mention the fact that if she were around to identify him as the menace that had torn her crew to pieces, he’d be in trouble. Plus, he would be able study the effects that cryogenics had on the virus.

Selberg-- _ Hilbert _ , now--found the names of his crew. It was much smaller than the last one; Cutter was obviously not optimistic. Communications Officer Douglas Eiffel would be his test subject, then.

He changed Box 953’s entry in the manifest. He would reserve it for Eiffel; if worse came to worst, and Commander Minkowski caught on sooner than Lovelace had, Hilbert could get rid of Fourier, and use the cryo chamber for Eiffel. And if not, well, what was wrong with claiming the effects of a dead man? Much less something he hadn’t even known was his.

Eiffel turned out to be much more of a handful than Hilbert had anticipated. He was suspicious from the start that Hilbert was a crazed, mad scientist, which meant that he had to be that much more careful. But Decima, at least, was responsive.

And then--the talent show. Pseudo-drunk Minkowski. The cannon. Eiffel had been so close to discovering the box’s contents. And then it was gone.

Victoire Fourier, frozen in time and space, spiraled into the star.

Did she feel anything? Hilbert wondered. Had the heat from the star thawed her enough to wake, seconds before her death? Or was it painless, like dying in sleep?

He did not mourn. She should have died two years ago, anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm just saying, it's super cold, and Eiffel heard what sounded like a heartbeat. 2+2 and all that.
> 
> come bother me at chatchevalier.tumblr.com!


End file.
